Billions at stake as Apple v. Qualcomm trial begins

“How much are iPhone chips worth? That more or less is the question to be decided by a US court as Apple seeks billions in damages from former chip supplier Qualcomm,” Julie Charpentrat reports for AFP. “Since Apple originally filed suit in January 2017, the two US firms have been suing each other in multiple countries in a multi-front battle.”
“At the heart of the battle are the royalties Qualcomm charges for its patented chips, which enable smartphones to connect to mobile networks,” Charpentrat reports. “Apple accuses Qualcomm, which holds the most patents for chips, of taking advantage of its dominant position to charge exorbitant amounts for its chips or access to its patents. The iPhone maker refuses to pay up and is also seeking what could be billions of dollars in compensation.”
“After jury selection in the San Diego federal court, arguments are expected to begin Tuesday. Apple chief Tim Cook and Qualcomm’s CEO Steve Mollenkopf are both expected to appear during the trial, which is set to last around a month,” Charpentrat reports. “‘In order to purchase Qualcomm chips or obtain access to patents pledged to a cellular standard, Qualcomm demands that third parties pay Qualcomm a royalty much greater than the value of Qualcomm’s contribution to the standard,’ Apple argues. ‘What this means in the case of the iPhone is that when Apple engineers create a revolutionary new security feature such as touch ID, which enables breakthrough technologies like Apple Pay, Qualcomm insists on royalties for these and other innovations it had nothing to do with and royalty payments go up,’ it said. ‘Even when Apple sells an iPhone with added memory — 256GB instead of 128GB — Qualcomm collects a larger royalty just because of that added memory,’ according to the company, which claims it has been overcharged by ‘billions of dollars.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Qualcomm’s jig is almost up.
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